Be Okay Today
by fairwinds09
Summary: Filling in missing scenes from 8x09-10. Derek really doesn't think he can through one of her near-death experiences again. Meredith reminds him that she's not going anywhere. Ends with Zola's return and toothache-inducing fluff. Derek's POV, one-shot.


A/N: Fair warning-this is a very long note! But I have some important things to say, and I'd like to get them out ahead of time.

I am brand-new to the world of GA fanfic - actually, fairly new to the world of the show itself. I started binge-watching it this summer on Netflix, because I've loved _Scandal_ for years now; I knew Shonda Rhimes did _Grey's Anatomy_ , too, so I figured I'd probably like it. This began an obsession with the show that began approximately five months ago and has not flagged since. I now understand the deep, deep level of obsession shared by true GA fans, and I am so very grateful that I got to join the fandom and support this amazing show.

A brief note of appreciation here: When I started reading GA fanfic five months ago, I ran across some of the most talented writers I'd ever encountered in the eight years or so I've been reading and writing fanfic. I hope they don't mind, but I have to give a shout-out to AriaAdagio, MortalCity, and Morgen86, among many others. (If you're not named here and I loved your fic, please forgive me. I'm just listing off the first names that come to mind.) These writers helped shape my view of the characters as I watched, gave me new motivations and character developments to dig into, and have given me countless hours of quality reading. Thank you so much.

This fic is set during the night and following day of 8x09-10, right after Meredith and Alex's ambulance gets hit by a car and everyone in Derek and Sloan's O.R. hears it happen. It is meant to serve as filler for the scenes that I think we don't get to see in those episodes. I both love and hate Shonda's habit of giving us tiny glimpses into what can only be longer and deeper conversations and moments between the characters. In this episode in particular, I found it impossible to believe that Derek's reaction in the O.R. after he hears the crash is the only reaction he ever has. After everything he and Meredith have been through in this particular arc (and given the past traumas they've endured), I can only think that he would have an intensely stress-filled and painful response until he knew she was safe again. The tiny sliver of interaction they have when she gets off the ambulance (and his seeming calmness) made me wonder if Derek somehow contacted her before she and Alex got back to Seattle Grace. Thus, this small fic was born.

Please note - this fic is divided into five parts. All the dialogue in quotes in parts two and five comes directly from the show; no copyright infringement is intended, and I freely acknowledge that these words are not my own. Also, I borrowed the title of the fic from Ingrid Michaelson's "Be Okay."

So...read, enjoy, and let me know what you think!

* * *

He stands there, in his O.R., frozen, and the only thing he can think of, the only coherent thought running through his mind, is _not again. Please God, not again._

They were talking - Karev, Meredith, talking, explaining about being broken down on the side of the road, static hissing as they cut in and out. The last thing they heard was Meredith yelling at him, something about fixing his guilt by letting somebody die in an ambulance, and then the sound of a crash, metal ramming into metal, and then…

Then the dial tone.

He cannot think God would be so cruel as to let her last words, the last words he ever heard her say in this life, be _let you die in an ambulance_. The irony of it is too much, leaves hot bile churning in his stomach, snaking up the back of his throat.

It takes him a long moment to feel Mark's eyes boring into him, to realize that he's shaking, fine tremors running through his muscles, that his scalpel hand is wavering, well above the line of the incision. He can't see, can't breathe, his eyes are blurring and he can't figure out why. Then the steady drone of the dial tone (so much like a flatline, he can't bear it) shifts to the irritating beep-beep-beep of a busy signal, and he swallows convulsively. Just then, Avery bustles into the room, going on about emergency dispatch and helicopters and God knows what. He doesn't care anymore. Until he can see her, hear her voice and know that she's okay, he doesn't care about a single damn thing.

Through the haze, he hears Robbins explaining the situation, feels the words burn into him: _we lost them_. He vaguely registers that Mark's getting Avery to fill in for him, that he's no good right now, no good for anyone, certainly not his patient.

"Derek," Mark says, not ungently, and he snaps out of it, surrenders the scalpel to Avery and stalks away, ripping off his gloves as he goes. He can't, he can't, he can't do this again, can't live with this again, thinking that she might be dead or injured, bleeding out on the side of the road in the rain and the cold. His traitorous imagination draws the outlines for him, fills everything in with Technicolor - Meredith in pain, hemorrhaging, shivering, helpless. Alone. There's a moment, when he's striding down the hall to tell Hunt, a crazed moment when he thinks very seriously about jumping in the closest vehicle and just going out to look for her himself.

He shakes the idea away, knows it's stupid and pointless, and he makes himself do the smart, sensible thing and get emergency dispatch instead of heading out there by himself like a cowboy. That decision nearly changes when he sees the looks on their faces, that closed-off, cagey look that he knows too well because he uses it himself far too often. The look that says there's bad news, and they don't want to have to say what it is.

"What is it?" he snaps, because deep in his gut he's terrified that it's for him, that they're not telling him something. That maybe they already know that the rig blew, or that Karev and Meredith were badly injured in the crash, or that maybe (just maybe) his wife is lying in bloody bits on the side of the highway and his world is about to come crashing down.

Hunt turns away, barking something into the phone, and Richard looks at him, pain and pity in his eyes.

"What?" he half-snarls at the older man, because he can't take the tension one moment longer.

Richard shakes his head slowly, and the coiling in his gut tightens unbearably. Then he sighs, looks down at the ground.

"It's Henry," he says, and there's a moment there, a moment he'll be ashamed of later, when a glorious wave of relief washes through his entire body and all he can think is _not Meredith, not Meredith, not Meredith_. It's like being baptized, made new, but he can't wallow in it because Richard's still speaking, and this is Teddy, and so it matters. Even now, it matters.

"We tried everything," Richard's saying, and he forces himself to nod sympathetically. "The tumor was just too large, and with it being in the pulmonary artery like that...he'd lost over half his blood volume before we gave up and called time of death. I mean, how could he come back from something like that?"

Derek nods, puts a firm hand on his mentor's shoulder, tries his best to school his features into something resembling warm and supportive when all he can really feel is exhaustion and bone-deep fear that his wife may be dead and he still doesn't know.

"Have you told Altman yet?" he asks, and Richard looks down, to the left, bites the inside of his cheek. Hunt's still on the phone, has wandered down the hallway and is gesticulating angrily with the hand not holding his cell to his ear, but Richard looks - Richard looks guilty. He knows guilty on Richard, has seen it plenty of times before.

Even with the panic setting up shop in every single one of his internal organs, it doesn't take long for him to put the pieces together.

"You - you haven't told her?" he asks, voice rising with incredulity, and Richard meets his eye, pleading for understanding.

"There's a woman on the table in there," he says firmly, and for just a minute he sounds like the chief again. "She'll die if Altman isn't in there, focused, doing her job. Is telling her now worth that woman's life? Worth her family losing a wife, a mother?"

He stares at Richard, blank, and then the words set in, pricking, stabbing, settling their claws in his unprotected flesh. _Losing a wife_ echoes around him, and he knows, he can tell from Richard's face that the other man expects him to answer, to agree, but he can't seem to muster up a single word. It strikes him suddenly that he and Teddy are in the exact same boat, not knowing what's happened yet, not knowing how bad it could possibly be. The one thing he's absolutely sure of is what's waiting for her outside this O.R., the unimaginable journey that she's about to take without a moment's notice. He, on the other hand, is still holding onto the fragments of hope that Meredith...that he will not be the one standing outside another O.R., on the other side of a curtain, waiting for someone to tell him that everything he's pinned his life on has been ripped away.

And the thing is, the brutal, awful truth is that he _remembers_. He's been here before. How many times now - two, three, if he counts the time he didn't know about because he was sedated with his chest cracked open under the bright lights of his own O.R.? He's been here, he _knows_ what this is like, to think that the love of his goddamn life is dead. He knows, and he doesn't think he can do it again, keep doing it over and over. It's going to drive him insane, and the horrible swirling agony of it grips him by the throat, cuts off his air until he paws blindly at the mask still hanging around his neck like it's a noose.

"I - I have to go," he croaks at Richard, turns and almost stumbles his way down the hall, makes a left turn, and finds his hand on the doorway of an on-call room. He swings it open, welcoming the quiet darkness, sinks down on the empty, slightly rumpled bed and buries his head in his hands. After a moment, he tunnels his fingers through his hair and tugs a little in an effort to clear his mind, but none of it's working.

The darkness presses in on him, the silence envelops him, and suddenly all he can hear is the sound of an explosion in the hallway outside, homemade ordnance booming in a deadly blast, and the only thought in the universe is _Meredith_ because, last he heard, she had her hand resting directly on that bomb. That was the first time, he thinks, chest heaving, the first time he thought he'd lost her. (It did not get any better from there.)

He doesn't want to think of her drowning, shrinks in on himself as the breaths shudder in and out of him, as he remembers diving over and over again, looking for her in the icy water, seeing her hair streaming out around her head like a horrible sort of halo. He certainly doesn't want to remember the feel of her in his arms, limp and waterlogged, or the touch of her ice-cold lips as he administered CPR, frantically, unceasing, again and again and again until they got to the hospital and kicked him out of her room. He doesn't want to _remember_ waiting outside her room, hearing the whine of the defibrillator as they shocked her heart into sinus rhythm again and again, feeling the hot slip of tears down his cheeks as he waited for someone to come out and tell him that she was gone, dead and gone and not a damn thing he could do about it, not anymore.

He's grateful, in a sick way, that he simply cannot remember that she stepped in front of a bullet for him, _begged_ that crazed bastard to kill her, shoot her instead of him. Every time he thinks of it something white-hot and tight plasters itself across his sternum, the sheer wrongness of it making him so furious he can't breathe, and so he finds it best to just not think of it. At all, if possible. Because the idea of Meredith, his Meredith, pleading with Gary Clarke to shoot her, point a gun at her and fire point-blank, still makes him crazy. Utterly insane.

And now. Now, when Zola's gone and they'll never see her again, when Mere is bitter and heartbroken (because Cristina's right, he thinks she wanted this too, more than she ever let him see), now would be the absolute perfect time for the universe to deliver the knock-out punch, because he feels agonized, twisted up, and sick whenever he thinks that he may never hold his little girl again, but the idea of never holding Meredith? He has no words for that.

His mind skips back to before, in the hallway with Cristina not long after the two of them left in that damned rig, and he remembers her hand on his shoulder in an unusual gesture of solidarity.

 _...and now, if I lose Meredith?_ floats back to him, the memory tinged black and bitter at the edges. Lose her, he'd thought, because she'd walk out on him, like he'd walked out on her, only - only she was the stronger of the two of them. He'd always known that, really, known that when it came to a contest of the wills, she had him flat beat nearly every time. Once she decided, truly decided she was done, he didn't have a prayer, and he'd been terrified when she'd slammed the door of that rig and thrown herself into the seat that she was already walking down that road without a backwards glance to spare for him. And the worst of it was, he couldn't really claim he didn't deserve it.

Now, though, now with the whine of the dial tone still ringing in his ears, he thinks that he'd let her walk away a million times over, let her twist his heart between her hands like a crumpled lap sponge, if he could just know that she's safe. That she's not going to leave him, not like this, not in a pillar of fire on a highway in the middle of the night, not…

 _She comes back_ , Cristina's voice whispers in his ear, and he digs his nails into his scalp and groans, scrubs his eyes roughly with the backs of his hands. He clings to that. She comes back. She's always come back to him, always let him come back to her, they always find their way back to each other. Surely, she'll come back this time. She's okay, she's not hurt (at least not badly), she isn't crumpled into a shapeless heap, blood leaking into the pavement. She'll come back.

He's so deep in his head, trying to get his eyes to stop watering and make his breathing even out, that he doesn't even notice the knocking. He doesn't notice anything, busy trying to drown out the litany of _my fault, my fault, my fault_ , that the hand on his shoulder, gentle as it is, makes him jump backwards in shock. Avery looks down at him, wary, eyes narrowed just a little. Derek heaves in a breath, scoots backwards on the bed a little farther. He doesn't want to know, he discovers abruptly. _Please don't tell me,_ something whispers in the back of his brain. Because if it's bad...and Avery looks nervous, looks like he can't spit out of the words for fear of...what?

"Dr. Shepherd," he says, hesitantly, and Derek wants to run, get up and spring for the door, but his legs have turned to jelly underneath him and he can't move. "Dr. Shepherd, we heard from the rig that went out to find Karev and Meredith. They…"

He pauses again, and Derek's mouth goes sawdust dry. His back molars clench painfully, because if he unclamps his jaw his teeth will chatter and he doesn't want Avery seeing that.

"...umm, they're on their way here, with the baby and the patients from the car that hit them. It was pretty bad, one fatality on the scene and - "

Avery breaks off when Derek grabs his arm, fingers biting in harshly. _Idiot_ , he wants to hiss through his teeth, but he can't make his mouth work. Finally, finally, he manages to pry his jaw apart and gasp the words out.

"What?" Avery asks, his face blank with confusion, and Derek makes a hoarse hacking sound, all the tangled grief of the past hour clotting in his airway, and tries again.

"Is she all right?" he chokes, and Avery's face clears.

"The baby? Yeah, she's fine!" he says, almost chirpy, and Derek wants to strangle him with his bare hands, his surgeon's hands.

"Meredith," he snarls, his fingers trembling on the other man's sleeve. "Is Meredith all right?"

It's like a light dawning, the slow creep of comprehension across Avery's stupidly pretty face.

"Oh!" he exhales, looking a little sheepish. "Oh, yeah, right. Sorry. Yeah, she's fine. She and Karev got thrown around a little when the rig got hit, but it's nothing major. They're okay. I can get her on the phone if you want - it's Hunt's, and it's got, like, this great satellite receptor military thing - "

He doesn't get around to saying anything else because Derek grabs the phone out of his hand abruptly and has the recent calls list pulled up before Avery can draw in another breath.

"This one?" he snaps, and he's dialing before Avery's finished his first nod.

Two rings, three, and then there's a click as someone picks up.

"Yeah?" a voice rumbles on the other end, and he breathes out, frustrated. He doesn't give a damn about talking to Karev.

"It's Shepherd," he states without preamble. "You have Meredith there with you?"

He wants to talk to her, wants to hear the sound of her voice, but it still helps when Karev says "Yeah, okay" in that annoyed tone of voice that says he's busy with other, more important things. That means they're all right, he keeps telling himself. They're okay, and everything's going to be fine. (Except that's really her phrase, and he thinks he needs to come up with his own signature attempt at faking normalcy.)

"Put her on the line," he demands, and Karev blows out an irritated breath before there's a crackle, and then everything in his body loosens because it's her voice, and he can breathe again for the first time in forty-seven minutes.

"Mere?" he croaks, and he can hear her breathing on the other end. It may possibly be the sweetest thing he's ever heard in his life, right next to that moment on the elevator when she wrapped both arms around him and said yes.

"Derek," she answers, and he slumps onto the end of the bed frame, clutches the slick metal for dear life, and hangs on. "Hey, it's gonna be crazy when we get here. We have five people - the mom, the dad, and three kids. Most of them got ejected when the car hit our - "

But he doesn't let her finish.

"We don't have to have kids," he blurts out, no finesse, no preamble, and out of the corner of his eye he sees Avery edging towards the door. "I'll fight like hell to get Zola back. I will. She's our baby and I'll fight for her, no matter what it takes. But if we can't have kids, if you don't want to anymore, we don't have to. It's enough, just you and me. We're enough. Mere - "

He breaks off this time, because he can hear the change in her breathing, the raggedness at the edges, and she's tearing him to tiny pieces with every inhale.

"Derek," she whispers, and he holds the phone so hard it hurts, wishes with everything he has that it was her hand. "Derek...I don't...you always wanted… _we_ wanted..."

He shakes his head, fiercely, ignores the wetness on his cheeks.

"I want you," he says, bluntly, all traces of McDreamy gone. There's nothing left right now but him, honesty and fear cutting down to the bone, through to the marrow. "I just...I want you. I want us. You - you could have died in that rig, Mere. You could have died. And I…"

She hauls in a long breath, pushes it out again shakily.

"I'm okay," she says, softly. "I'm fine. Really fine, not just me-fine."

He tries to chuckle a little at that, although he's pretty sure it sounds more like a half-sob.

"Good," he manages, sniffles in a most unmanly way. "Thank God. I just - Karev was on the phone with us, in the O.R., and then the crash happened, and I - "

He breaks off, tries to collect himself, almost smiles when he thinks that his wife's habit of rambling during stressful moments is clearly wearing off on him. Right now, he doesn't care.

She sighs again, and he can almost see her, the exhaustion in her face, that little line between her eyebrows becoming more pronounced with worry for him. (She complains that she's getting wrinkles in her early thirties, and God knows what she'll look like in ten years. She tells him she'll be a hag by 50. He thinks, every time she says it, that he can't wait to see her at 50. Or 75. Or 100. Any age at all.)

"Derek," she murmurs again, and the tone of her voice is that very gentle one that she reserves for when something is wrong, when he's sick or hurting. It's not babying - he doesn't think Meredith Grey would try to baby him even if she knew how. But it's the one that caresses him like her tiny fingers through his hair, her lips against his cheek, the one that reminds him that they're okay, and they love each other, and there's a Post-It hanging on their bedroom wall to prove that they promised it all. It's her Post-It voice, he thinks.

"Derek, we're okay. Not just us in the ambulance, I mean. Us-us."

"Us-us?" he repeats, mostly because he loves her habit of making up words even if he teases her unmercifully about it. Some days he thinks he needs a Meredith Grey lexicon.

"Yeah, us-us," she says, determined. "We're okay. I know - I know things have been bad with us, and you've been angry, and I've been angry, and we don't know what's going to happen with Zola, and...well, everything. Everything has sucked. But us? We're going to be okay. I'm the least optimistic person I know, besides Cristina, and I'm saying it has to be okay. So it has to be."

He smiles, actually smiles, for the first time in what feels like forever.

"If you say it has to be, then okay," he says, and he can feel his fingers relax around Hunt's phone. "Okay."

There's a moment, a blessed moment of silence between them in which nobody feels the need to say anything because they both know exactly what isn't being said. Then there's a voice yelling something on her end, and a crackle as she shifts the phone, and he knows that their respite is over.

"Derek, I - I have to go," she says, sounding stressed. "It's the dad, he keeps crashing, but I'll see you when we get there, okay? I'll see you in a few minutes."

"You're getting yourself checked out the second you pull up," he says sternly, because he knows how she is about taking care of herself.

"Yeah, sure, okay," she says, most of her attention already gone. "All right, Alex, hand me that kit - 'bye, Derek."

And, with that, she's gone.

He sits for a while, staring at the phone in his hand, tracing his thumb absently over the ridges and valleys of the keypad.

She's okay. And she says _they're_ okay. It's more than he dared to hope for.

* * *

When she gets there, climbs out of the back of the ambulance, she's all business. She lets him wrap an arm around her, lets him tell her to get herself checked out, and then she's shooing him off to the O.R. to work on the car crash victim's eye. It's funny, he thinks to himself as he heads off to find his patient. He saw her for thirty seconds, maybe less, but the press of her body against his, the feel of her arm under his hand, and just like that, he's better. Just seeing her, knowing that she's safe, she's alive, she cheated death one more time-that's what will get him through however many more hours he's going to be in the O.R.

At first, everything's going just fine. He and Mark assess the patient, determine that they need Julia's help, and he can't help but take the opportunity to give Mark a little well-deserved roasting.

"How much trauma has your girlfriend done?" he queries as they walk down the stairs together.

"A lot," Mark answers. "She's told me about a bunch of her cases."

Derek rolls his eyes for his best friend's benefit.

"Oh, so we're just going off your pillow talk?" he snarks. He's giving Mark the third degree partly for the fun of it, but he's serious about the competency part of the conversation. Just because the woman's sleeping with his best friend doesn't mean she knows what she's doing in the O.R.

"If I get a hint that your girlfriend is in over her head, I'm gonna boot her out of my O.R.," he says, firmly. Mark gives him a pissy look.

"You know what your problem is? You don't think anyone who sleeps with me can be talented or have half a brain."

"That is not true," Derek points out, in his best _I'm being very reasonable here_ tone.

"It's mostly true."

He just can't resist, not when the fruit is hanging so temptingly low.

"Yeah, yeah, it's mostly true." And then he has to fight the urge to guffaw, because Meredith's okay and he's giving Mark hell about his taste in women, and this evening is going to be all right after all, instead of the bottomless pit of hell he had feared. It almost makes him a little giddy under all the stress and exhaustion.

"Your ex-wife is brilliant, and she slept with me," Mark points out, which would have earned him a good sock to the jaw once upon a time, but Derek discovered a while back that he really didn't care anymore about Addison's betrayal. Not after Meredith.

"Well-" he begins, but Mark cuts in.

"Not trying to start a fight. I'm just sayin'."

Derek takes a deep breath in through his teeth, which he supposes Mark might interpret as an effort to control his temper. It's mostly exhaustion, though, mixed with a little incredulity that Mark would be ballsy enough to bring up the fact that he slept with his best friend's wife (and got caught). But the temper? About this? Gone long ago.

"Dr. Canner?" he asks, greeting the little red-headed opthamologist standing in front of the patient's scans. She's pretty enough, and if Mark's telling the truth, she's smart and skilled. God knows it's going to be awkward having her in the same room as Lexie, but he really doesn't have room in his brain for Mark's romantic drama today. He has plenty of his own, enough to last him a lifetime. "Thanks for coming in on such short notice."

Briskly, he turns back to the row of back-lit scans. He's still got work to do today.

* * *

Everything's going just fine, until it's not.

They're waiting on the O.R. to get prepped, Dr. Canner's getting ready to scrub in, and he stops off by the coffee cart because it's been a hell of a long day, it's turning into a hell of a long night, and if he doesn't get some caffeine in his body he may very well fall asleep standing straight up in his own O.R. He's waiting on his coffee, leaning against the cart and letting his eyelids dip a little with exhaustion, when he hears someone come up behind him, and then Alex Karev thuds into his field of vision with an order for a double-shot espresso.

He's too tired at the moment to move, so they wait there for a few minutes, the whir of the coffee grinder and the hiss of the steamer the only things breaking the silence. Finally, he musters the energy to look over at the other man.

"Rough night," he says; it's not a question. Karev just nods.

"Did you-did you get checked out? When you got here?" he asks, hating the mother-hen sound of the question. It's not the sort of thing he'd usually say to another doctor, and certainly not to Karev, who's always projected a macho tough guy sort of image. But Alex Karev is Meredith's family, and he was in the ambulance with her, and so Derek is forced to care for him whether he likes it or not.

Karev just shrugs, though, braces himself against the little counter of the coffee cart and leans over until his head rests on his crossed forearms.

"Yeah," he mutters, a little muffled. "I'm good. Mere got checked out too, got that cut on her head sewn up. We're good."

Derek nods, not failing to notice the plural pronoun. Those five interns were always close, right from the beginning, but even with everything that's happened in the intervening years, the ones who remain have stayed tight, a close-knit little unit. Right now, he's damned grateful for it.

"I'm glad," he says, sincerely. "When we heard the crash…" He trails off, not sure where to go with this line of conversation. How exactly does one say _I thought for a little while that my entire world was gone and then I had a slight meltdown in an on-call room_?

Karev seems to get it, though.

"It was rough," he says, simply. "I was worried about Mere for a minute there. She's tough, though, got right back out there to help the crash victims. Scared me half to death when she flagged that ambulance down, though."

Derek stares at him, hardly noticing that the woman manning the cart has placed his coffee in front of him.

"Why did it-what did she-" he starts, confused, and then he notices that there's a flush mottling Karev's exhausted pallor.

"Uh...maybe you should ask her," he mutters, and something knots behind Derek's sternum.

"Tell me," he says, softly, but there's steel in his tone. Karev's gaze darts towards his shoes, the side of the cart-anywhere but Derek's eyes.

"It's nothing," he protests. "It's okay, we're fine. We are."

Derek can feel his jaw tensing, his eyes narrowing. God knows he's heard enough _I'm fine_ 's from Meredith to know a fake assurance when he hears one.

" _Tell me_ ," he hisses, his fingers closing around Karev's sleeve. He doesn't know how much more he can take tonight, and he has a surgery in a few minutes, but suddenly there's nothing more important in the world than hearing exactly what happened out there on that dark stretch of road. Knowing exactly how close his nightmares were to the truth.

Karev's eyes flash, and he yanks his arm out of Derek's grasp with an irritated huff.

"It was fine," he says one more time, but when he crosses his arms over his chest and risks a glance in Derek's direction, he seems to reconsider. "All right. All right, maybe not fine. She did something stupid, just for a minute. But it turned out all right."

"What did she do?" It's quiet, but the words are serrated, scraped raw over his vocal cords.

"There was an ambulance coming around the bend in the road," Karev starts, tone neutral and face carefully blank. "She was trying to pull Michael, the boy, out from under the door of the car. He was trapped. I saw it coming, yelled at her to get out of the way."

He stops, as if this is the end of the story. Slowly, Derek reaches for his coffee cup, takes a sip. The liquid burns his tongue, sears the lining of his throat, but he barely feels it.

"And?"

"And she...kind of, uh, stepped out in front of the ambulance. To get it to stop. She didn't want it to hit the kid."

He's frozen, cup in hand.

"She stepped in front of an oncoming vehicle?" he manages, after what seems like forever. Karev swallows and grabs his own cup, which must have been placed behind him at some point. Honestly, though, Derek can't really think of much besides the fact that Meredith, his Meredith, stepped in front of an oncoming ambulance. On purpose. His head is spinning.

"I mean, it stopped," Karev offers, as if that makes any possible sort of difference. "And it would've hit the kid if she hadn't. So, y'know…"

"She stepped in front of it."

Karev looks at him as if he's being more than a little dense, but all he can think of is the sound of a blast ripping apart a hallway, the feel of icy lips beneath his own, the whine of a flatline blending into the sound of a dial tone. Jesus, sweet _Jesus_ , she stepped out in front of a vehicle, and it's Elliott Bay all over again, back to wondering what in the hell he's supposed to do with himself when she flirts with death like this. How he's supposed to keep breathing like a normal human being when his wife insists on endangering her own life in moments of emotional crisis. Holy Mother of God, but he can't take this. He just can't.

"Dude," he hears Karev saying, although the sound seems strangely muffled. "Dude, you need to sit down or something. Here."

He's being prodded towards one of the benches that sit against the wall, and he can't even make himself resist. He sinks down on one, sips at his coffee mechanically. Karev sits next to him, frowning.

"She's okay," he says, and for a second it worries Derek that he's so damn easy to read when it comes to her. He grits his teeth, tries not to let the coiling fear explode.

"She could be dead right now," he observes in a clinical sort of tone. _Dead_ , the word clings to his tongue, bitter and nauseating. _Dead. Meredith could be dead._

"But she isn't," Karev points out. "She's okay. She didn't do it...I mean, she just wanted to keep the kid safe."

He grabs onto the words and clings to them like a lifeline. This isn't Elliott Bay again, this isn't Meredith choosing to give up because trying is just too damn hard. He knows she's heartbroken and angry and bitter about Zola, and he can't blame her. He knows he's been an ass, and she should blame him. But she promised, she _promised_ , signed her name to the Post-it, told him on the phone that they were going to be okay, and he clings to that because if he doesn't, he can't imagine what awaits him in the abyss of fear below.

"Yeah," he says, after a long pause. "I know. We talked on the phone. I know."

Karev studies him for a long moment, then, unexpectedly, claps a hand on his shoulder.

"She wouldn't do that," he says, and Derek can hear the unwonted rasp of emotion behind the words. "She wouldn't. Not to you, not to any of us."

He nods, absent-mindedly rubs his thumb across the sleeve of his coffee cup.

"No," he agrees, eyes trained on his shifting thumb. "No, she wouldn't."

His pager shrills, breaking into the bubble of their conversation, and he almost jumps, it's so unexpected. He grabs it off his belt, reads that they're ready for him.

"I...have to go," he murmurs, and Karev nods.

"You okay?" he asks, in a strange reversal of the beginning of their conversation, and Derek stares at him as if he's in a dream.

"Sure, yeah," he says, and tilts his coffee back to chug what he can before he goes into the O.R. "I'm good."

Karev nods again, and then Derek's off. He finishes his coffee on his way up to the O.R., scrubs in next to Mark and Lexie, moving robotically as he mentally stuffs all the tangle of fear and worry into a tiny compartment in his head and leaves it for later. When he steps into the O.R., he's back to his usual self, at least outwardly-a little tired, a little tense, but nothing out of the ordinary.

The rest will have to wait until they're finished.

* * *

He catches her waiting for the elevator, looking pale and drained from the crush of the day. The bandage on her forehead stands out against her hair like a banner, a white flag.

"Hey," he murmurs as he stands next to her, and she turns to him, smiles a little when she meets his eyes.

"Hey," she murmurs back, and she lets her head fall against his shoulder. It's a little gesture, so small, really, but it looses one of the knots of miserable fear that formed in his chest when Karev told him about the ambulance. He slides his hand into hers and watches the numbers light up as the car travels down to them.

"You hungry?" he asks, because he doesn't want to bring up what Karev said, not now when they're both exhausted and entirely unready for another emotionally charged conversation. He needs to learn when to pick his battles, he thinks to himself.

She shakes her head.

"I'm...I don't know what," she confesses, her fingers tightening around his. "That girl...the whole thing. It was…"

She trails off, and he turns to press his lips to her hairline, right against the edge of the bandage.

"I'm sorry," he whispers, and it's an apology for everything that he can't say to her right now. _I'm sorry_ , for leaving, for blaming her for Zola, for being distant, for all of it. If nothing else could put all of this mess in perspective, it's what almost happened on that dark stretch of highway tonight.

She doesn't say a word in response, just curls into him, lays her head in the crook of his shoulder and wraps her arm around his waist. He holds her, breathes in the scent of lavender like a balm, and they don't move until the elevator dings in front of them and they silently step on.

She presses the button, and then steps back, lets him slide both arms around her from behind, bury his face in the curve of her neck. He holds her like that for a long moment, until he feels her stiffen against him and she turns to look at him.

"What's wrong?" she says softly. He shakes his head, eyes trained on her collarbone. He can't look at her, or she'll know. She has an uncanny way of reading his mind when he least wants her to.

"Nothing's wrong," he lies. "Just a long night. Ready to go home."

He flicks a glance up to her face just in time to catch her raised eyebrows, and his stomach sinks. She's not going to let this go.

"Something's wrong," she insists. "You're doing the hugging thing, and you only do that when something's wrong."

He bristles a little, deliberately. "I do not only hug you when something is wrong," he says, hoping to distract her. She huffs out a breath through her nose.

"You only hug me like _that_ when something's wrong," she clarifies, and he drops his eyes to the floor. She knows him too well, knows when he's hovering. Damn it.

"Meredith-" he starts, but she holds up a peremptory hand to silence him, and then reaches over and does the one thing he was really, really hoping she wouldn't. Deliberately, she presses the STOP button, and the elevator grinds to a halt. "Mere-"

"What is it?" she asks. "The surgery, Zola, the trial-what is it?"

He bites his lip, looks away, focussing on their blurry reflections in the elevator doors.

"This isn't the time," he says, trying desperately to keep everything locked away in its airtight mental compartment. They're too tired, too raw, and they can't have this out now. Not in an elevator with no way to escape the fight that he fears is about to ensue. He can't take her anger right now, he just can't.

"Derek, you're upset about something," she says firmly. "And I know things have been crappy lately, and we've been angry at each other, but I'm tired of it. I'm tired of us not talking. So talk to me. Tell me what it is. I don't want to do the angry silence thing anymore."

He stares at her, finally meeting her gaze straight on, and he sees the truth of it there in her eyes. She wants to try, with him, despite everything. In his mind's eye, he sees her slam the ambulance door in his face, sit on the padded bench with nothing but bitterness in her face, and he takes a deep breath. He can't ask her to try if he won't try too.

"Karev told me," he says baldly, because he can't think how to dress it up right now. "He told me what happened...out there on the road. And I…"

She frowns at him, bewildered.

"You know what happened," she says. "We talked about it. We got hit, we were fine."

"Not that part," he says. "After that."

Her brows wrinkle as she ponders, and he fights the urge to kiss her because it's so damn cute. (He doesn't know what it says about him that, after the day they've had, after everything that's happened, he still finds his wife of over two years utterly adorable. He suspects it's worse than pathetic. He doesn't really care.)

She gives up after a moment.

"What are you talking about?" she says. "Nothing else happened. We brought them back here in the ambulance. That's all that happened."

He clenches his jaw, because, adorable as she is, he can't believe she doesn't even _remember_ tempting fate by stepping right out in front of a moving vehicle.

"You jumped in front of an oncoming ambulance," he grits out, and she goes very still. "You stood there in front of a vehicle that was headed straight for you and didn't move out of the way. That's what happened."

She peers up at him with another little frown.

"But Alex told you about the kid, right? That the boy was trapped under the car, and we couldn't get him out? I had to keep them from running into him," she explains, as if once he knows the circumstances, it'll all be just fine.

"He told me," he snaps, and the fight that he was trying to keep tamped down comes roaring back to life in his chest. "But do you really think that made the slightest bit of difference to me, Meredith? When you could've _died_? What if they had hit you _and_ the boy? Did you even _think_ about that?"

She stares at him.

"What did you want me to do, Derek, move out of the way and let them mow him down? I did what I had to do. You would've done the same thing if you'd have been there. I know you would."

He takes a breath in through his nose, tries to combat the swell of helpless fury.

"That is completely beside the point!" he flares at her. "You could've died when that ambulance got hit, because you wouldn't damn well get out when you should have, and then you _stepped in front of_ another one, and I couldn't-I can't-"

He breaks off, because he has no idea what comes next. She's still staring, but there's a tinge of understanding dawning in her eyes.

"I did it for the patient, Derek," she says softly, but he can't look at her anymore, stares off into the corner at nothing, because suddenly his breath is too tight in his chest and his eyes are starting to sting. He can't bottle it all up anymore, not now that he's out of the O.R. and the pressure of being professional is no longer keeping him held together. He turns away from her, plants both hands on the wall of the elevator, and lets his head fall against the cool surface with a hollow thunk.

"Derek," she whispers, and he feels her small hand on his shoulder. "Derek, look at me."

He shakes his head, stays bent against the wall, hauling in breath after breath. His throat hurts and his eyes are still stinging fiercely, and he can't look at her or he'll lose it, right there on the elevator floor. She's relentless, though, tugs at him until he reluctantly turns his head to meet her eyes. They're soft and limpid green, and he feels his world all-encompassed in the space of her gaze.

"I didn't do it on purpose," she tells him, and her other hand slides up to cover his. At the touch of her skin against his, he stands up slowly out of his bent pose, looking at her all the while. Then, he takes her face in both hands, rubs his thumbs over her cheekbones.

"Meredith," he mutters, his voice a hoarse rasp over the syllables of her name. "I just-I couldn't lose you. Again. And we left things-"

She reaches up, wraps her hands around his wrists.

"I know," she says, her fingers pressing against his radial arteries. "We left on a bad note. But Derek, you don't really think that I would-that I did it on purpose. Do you?"

He closes his eyes, shame and fear colliding at the sound of her words.

"I don't-no, I don't think you did it on purpose," he says, dropping his hands to her shoulders. She lets go of his wrists, looks at him with suspicion clouding her eyes.

"Do you?" she pushes, and her hands come up to his chest, small and demanding. "Do you think I would still do that? After everything?"

"No," he says, reflexively. "I know you wouldn't. But I-when Karev told me, I-I went back, and it was…"

Her eyes narrow for a moment, and her mouth thins. She opens it with a quick, angry breath, but suddenly she seems to think better of what she was about to say. Instead, she lifts a hand to his cheek, puts enough pressure to make him wince.

"I am not leaving you," she says quietly, fiercely, her nails digging into his hairline as if she can somehow press the words into his skin, brand them on his flesh. "I. Am. Not. Leaving. You. I'm not going anywhere. Not walking away, not stepping in front of an ambulance to end it all, not any of it. So stop hovering. And worrying. And moping. I'm not leaving you."

She stops and glares at him, and he feels a tiny reflexive smile form as her eyes bore into his. She's cute when she glares, too.

"I love you," he says in response, because it's the only thing he can think of out of the maelstrom of the day. "And I shouldn't have left, before. I'm sorry. That's all I could think of tonight, with everything. That I love you, and I'm sorry."

She takes in a deep breath.

"I love you, too," she says, and the sweetness of the words coming from her lips almost bowls him over. He'd started to wonder if they'd ever say it like that again, if this whole mess with the trial and with Zola had broken something forever. (He's more than happy to admit that this time he was dead wrong.) Riding high on the swell of relief, he pulls her into his arms, crushes her to him and buries his lips in her hair, relishes the way her arms wrap around him in response. He came so close to losing this, he thinks, far too many times. He doesn't want to waste another minute.

"Let's go home," he whispers, and he feels her nod against his chest.

"Okay," she says, and he reaches around her to press the STOP button again. He doesn't let go as the elevator starts its descent again.

They stand there, together, and for the first time in a long while, he believes her.

They're okay.

* * *

It's morning, too-bright light slanting through the windows of her mother's kitchen, and he's trying to make breakfast for them. Her head's on the table, and she's telling him she ordered pizza, which in his opinion defies all rules of what could possibly constitute an acceptable morning meal. She orders him to come and sit down by her. He doesn't refuse.

"Put your head down," she tells him, and he grins as he rounds the table to join her. He stares at her, feels himself smiling like an idiot, and doesn't care. She's beautiful, and she's bossy, and she's alive, and they're sitting at the table with pizza on the way and the sunlight streaming down behind them.

"I'd like to put a little salt on your nose and eat a bite," he says. As far as romantic comments go, it's utterly lame, but she giggles anyway and his heart melts just a bit more.

"The pizza will be here any minute," she says, smiling.

"Mm-hmm," he rumbles, and then his grin bleeds away and he lifts a hand to her hair, runs his fingers through the soft strands.

"We'll be okay," he murmurs, as much for himself as for her. "If it's just the two of us...if that's what you want." He said it already on the phone with her, trembling with released terror in that darkened on-call room, but he wants her to hear it again, face-to-face, in the cold and sober light of day. That she's enough for him, she'll always be enough.

She smiles up at him, eyes twinkling.

"I love you," she says, and it's everything. He leans over, kisses her cheek, savours the fact that she's just _there_. When the doorbell rings, it breaks the spell that she constantly weaves over him, and she bounces up in her chair like a five-year-old.

"Pizza!" she exclaims, and she's off like a rocket to the front door.

"Don't start eating that pizza without me," he says as she walks away. (He's only teasing a little; he knows full well that, with his wife, this is a very real possibility.) There's no reply, though, just a silence that stretches on and on, and when he turns around to check on her, she's standing stock still in the entryway, staring at the front door with wide, unblinking eyes.

"Meredith?" he asks, alarmed, and goes to her. What he sees on the other side freezes him in place beside her, heart thudding in his chest.

"Derek, is that our baby?" she asks, dumbfounded, and he can't quite believe what's before his eyes.

"Yes," he whispers, "yes, it is." And then everything else becomes a nonsensical blur until Zola's in his arms and he can see the pure joy on his wife's face, her eyes growing suspiciously damp. Awestruck, he hands the baby to her, watches the transformation happen, stands enraptured as the love blooms bright across her face.

"Hi!" she murmurs, kissing Zola's fingers. "Come here...come here." The baby babbles and wriggles in her arms, and Meredith's eyes are glowing, deep and green and filled with light.

He watches his wife embrace his daughter and sniff away the tears that threaten to overflow, and something deep inside him re-knits like a broken bone finally beginning to heal. He reaches out, wraps both arms around them, his little family all together in the lee of his chest, and presses his lips to Zola's head.

Meredith was wrong, he thinks. They both were. They're more than okay. They're alive, and they're together, and they have their daughter back.

They're perfect.


End file.
